Google has joined forces with charities, conservationists and non-governmental organizations to help raise awareness of endangered species around the world.

The new initiative is part of the Google Earth Outreach program, which aims to help non-profit and public benefit organizations to get the word out about what they do and make the public more aware. In this instance, Google Earth will have a new layer added that will offer users written, video and audio information on endangered species in different parts of the world.

The new layer has been made possible through the use of information already available through the ARKive project. The not-for-profit organization Wildscreen started the ARKive initiative, which aims to bring together the scattered knowledge of our endangered species. Now the ARKive layer will be available through Google Earth and Maps, hopefully opening the information up to more people than ever before.

Sir David Attenborough, well-known British wildlife broadcaster for the BBC, attended the Google headquarters in London to launch the ARKive layer late last week. He said:

Google has come together with Wildscreen, who have this unique distillation of images of the natural world, so that any one of us can go to a particular area on the globe and see what lives there … Google can take you to parts of the world where you can actually see a flock of flamingos and know whether they are there, or whether they are on the way out. For me this is an extraordinary day, I’m thrilled to be here at this particular moment – when Google, Wildscreen, and its ARKive project, come together to put a weapon of unparalleled value into the hands of all of us who care about the natural world.

Google Earth is a great application that provides a wealth of information to viewers. That information pool keeps growing and helping everyone to understand the world a little better. When it first came out everyone just used it to look up where they lived and other places they knew of. Now you can use it like an encyclopaedia, looking up interesting destinations and being provided with detailed information on a range of topics.

Adding information on endangered species to Google Earth will hopefully make everyone more aware of just what is disappearing from the planet. It should also lead to more work being done, and more aid being made available to save what might otherwise be lost.